Artemis, Legolas and Robin Hood might be legends of the bow and arrow, but there’s nothing mythical about the South Yorkshire family that has drawn five champion field archers.
When Albert Kiddy first picked up a bow and arrow in the early 1960s, little did he know that he and his future offspring would all hit the target on the international field.
Over the last 60 years, Albert, his wife, two daughters and granddaughter have all held the British championship title in field archery. They’ve won medals at European championships and Commonwealth Games, competed in World championships and the Olympics, and twice won England’s second-oldest sporting trophy, the Scorton Arrow.
This historic sport has taken Albert and his family across the world from their home in Brampton, representing their country in America, China, Europe, India, and the Caribbean.
Albert, now 91, says it’s been magic watching his family follow on the sport he took up as a young man. “I always expected them to win. We spent hours out shooting. I’d come home from work, have a slice of toast and get straight off to the field course – I could eat properly when it got dark. I remember taking our daughter Lynda in her carrycot onto the field when she was a baby.”
He was encouraged to take up the sport in 1962 by a colleague at building firm, Watfords of Wombwell, where he worked as a joiner. John Seddon was the reigning Yorkshire champion and a member of Dearne Valley Archery Club.
Albert went down to the club with his wife Joyce, a Darfield girl, to see what went off. He’d never shot an arrow before, let alone held an arrow. His only dabbling in sport was playing in goal for his school football team at Brampton Ellis, and winning the title of ‘Long Knock’ in the old South Yorkshire game of Nispy in his early 20s before joining the army.
Known as the poor man’s golf, Nipsy involved hitting a small piece of lignum vitae hardwood, taken from a bowling ball, off a brick with a stick. Albert whacked it 180 yards to claim the win.
“The prize giving ceremony was a few weeks after I’d been posted to Germany in 1954 and the Barnsley League wrote to the officer in charge to see if I could get a weekend’s leave for it. He wasn’t impressed.”
Even so, Albert managed to get home for the presentation weekend and has still got the egg-cup sized trophy over 70 years later.
At Dearne Valley Archery Club, he was a natural field bowman – as too was Joyce, who also joined the club after someone shoved a bow in her hand while she was spectating.
Just a few years after joining, Albert won the Scorton Arrow, a target archery competition dating back to 1673. Whoever hits the three-inch inner target on a 48-inch straw boss at 100-yard range first wins. On winning in 1965, Albert then became the Captain of Archers, having to organise the following year’s event in his name which he held at Wentworth Woodhouse.
At that time, the winner also took home the original almost-300-year-old silver arrow for a year. But with it being worth a bob or two, Albert kept it under his bed for safe keeping – and again when he won it for the second time in 1967. Today’s winners get a replica, with the original being housed at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.
In the 1960s he also became the first Grand Master Bowman in the freestyle category, recognising him in the top one percent of competitive archers.
Albert says Joyce was even better than him; she became Yorkshire, British and European champion.
By 1969, the Kiddys were two Dearne Valley archers of five selected for the British team at the first world championships in America. Joyce was the first woman to represent her country at the world stage. But it almost didn’t happen for the Brampton couple due to the fees needed to compete.
“It was £300 to go. Joyce had reservations that we could afford it and said we couldn’t go. But I told her we’d worry about it when we got back. She was glad she did as she finished sixth place.
“People sent money in, the club raised funds for us all, and we had a cheque from Dr Alec Clark of Beatson Clark who’d heard about us.”
Over the next eight years, Albert and Joyce competed together at the world championships four times, and three times at the Europeans.
After he retired in the late 1970s, Albert went on to coach regionally, training younger people how to flex their skills in field archery.
“Field archery is played outdoors in a wood, a bit like being on a golf course. Each target is different with terrain and position, but you’re also affected by the wind blowing or the sun shining. Lots of elements have to be right – hand position, chin angle, your teeth and eyes – but the most important part of the body is your mind.”
As their two daughters Lynda and Michelle got older, they too followed their parents onto the field course.
Lynda met her husband, Neil Oliver, through archery – he shot for Rotherham’s Chantry team and got onto the GB squad.
Younger sister Michelle competed between 2006 and 2017. She won a silver team medal at the Europeans in Italy in 2011 and was British field champion in 2006 and 2013.
The sport inevitably passed down to a third generation with Lynda and Neil’s daughter, Amy Oliver.
From a young age, Amy was a sharpshooter and, while her relatives were all amateur sportspeople, she turned professional. From 2006, she was a full-time target archer, training at Archery GB’s base in Lilleshall, Shropshire, where she was shooting up to 300 arrows a day alongside strength, cardio and mental training.
Amy first represented her country in Sweden in 2006, travelling the world over the next 11 years and winning a host of medals and accolades along the way.
She won individual gold and team silver at the 2007 European championships in Croatia, only her second competition. She competed at the World Games in Taiwan in 2009, won silver at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in Delhi, and knocked out the world’s number one, Deepika Kumani, at the London 2012 Olympics, finishing in the top 16.
In 2016, she became a double gold medallist at the world championships in the individual and team events – dedicating her win to her grandma Joyce who from breast cancer the same year.
After a successful career, Amy retired in 2017 just before her 30th birthday. She’s now a mum of two girls and still does field archery as a hobby.
Their competing days might be over, but the Kiddy family have built a legacy of their own. There can’t be many other families where this many members have excelled in the same sport.
Their story has been included in a new book by Barnsley author Duncan Gawthorpe about the sporting people of Darfield – Joyce grew up in the village before she married Albert in 1956.
Duncan kindly introduced us to Albert and when we met he was wearing his green British Archery issued suit adorned with all his accolades, including the two Scorton Arrow pins and his Grand Master medal.
Even now at 91, he’s still involved in the club that released his skills with a bow and arrow, as president of Dearne Valley Archery Club.
His home in Brampton is filled with photographs, bows and arrows – some still strung up as he no longer has the strength to undo them. Many of the bows were made by him, putting his carpentry skills to good use and saving the family from buying decent gear that could cost up to £800.
“Archery kept us poor as all our money went on buying tackle. But we’ve had some happy days and those memories are all I’ve got left now.”
To read more about Albert’s remarkable sporting life – and that of others like him – you can purchase a copy of Duncan’s book ‘Darfield: A Sporting Village’ from the Maurice Dobson Museum in Darfield for £10.
